LEONARDO DA VINCI & THE GUNS of COLUMBUS

This book, in the making for the last 20 years, is really two books in one:

In sum, this only surviving individual gun that can be documented to da Vinci, is also the one and only surviving gun that can be documented to Christopher Columbus as well.

Da Vinci (1452 - 1519) has long been credited with inventing the wheellock which came into use during his lifetime (early 1500s) and which was illustrated in his CODEX ATLANTICUS. But, almost a decade earlier than that, da Vinci solved the KEEP YOUR POWDER DRY problem by designing a matchlock with an Automatic-Opening Pan Cover as depicted in his long-lost and recently re-discovered MADRID CODICES (1490-1491), Volume I, Folio 18 v. [2]  Although known to have once existed in the 17th Century and cataloged in the Bibliotec National de Madrid, the actual two volumes had vanished from the library shelves and despite several massive searches, were lost for over 200 years. It was assumed they were stolen by French troops during the Napoleonic Wars. But, in 1967 they were accidentally rediscovered by an American musicologist looking for two Medieval song books.    

Today there is only one sole surviving gun which has this lock ignition mechanism (the Da Vinci-Columbus gun), and this gun is not just similar to the Automatic-Opening Pan Cover as depicted in the MADRID CODICES, but functions exactly the same.

With its gold and silver decorations, and its chiseled steel sculptural dcor, this gun is just as much a work of art as it is a weapon of war. Moreover, in addition to the Automatic-Opening Pan Cover Mechanism having been designed by Da Vinci, much of the gun's artistic dcor seems to have his fingerprints all over it. For example, as will be seen below, there are six dragons adorning the gun, and these look to be distinctively Da Vinci-style dragons. Not every renaissance artist made their dragons the same way. Da Vinci's dragons were quite different from his contemporaries, such as Michelangelo's or Albrecht Durer's dragons (as will be shown later). 

While it is impossible to know aft...